Category Archives: Corruption

I’m thinking that I may want to reconsider my position on things – it appears that the more radical and revolutionary you are, the more awards, employment opportunities, and face time you get.

Take for example Van Jones; although he was ousted from the White House for his trutherism, his radical ideological beliefs, namely being a self-professed communist, he is still receiving accolades from the liberal community. Van Jones will receive the coveted NAACP Image award this year and will also rejoin the Center for American Progress {be wary of that word Progress} a liberal “think” tank.

Van Jones calls himself an environmentalist, but more so in the sense of social justice; a term that many of us have been schooled in over the last couple of years. Social justice is just a nicer term used to confuse the masses that calls for the redistribution of wealth because of all the inequalities and unfairness in the world. Somewhere in life, I found that inequality and unfairness were part of human nature and it was up to an individual to make the most of what they were given and strive for success at every turn. I believe what I’m getting at is the “pursuit of happiness,” and there is a reason that the word pursuit is in the phrase; happiness isn’t handed to us – we have to earn respect and earn success.

Van Jones on the other hand, believes in the idea of welfare, hand outs and redistribution. He is a self-avowed communist who believes that nobody should be in jail, in fact they should all have green jobs to rehabilitate themseleves… something I’m more than a little skeptical of.

A little synopsis of what Van Jones is up to and some additional benefits that he is receiving:

In his first interview since stepping down as President Obama’s environmental adviser on Sept. 5, Jones said that a green jobs policy represents the best chance of both aiding poor Americans and bridging the political divide.

“When the food fight is over, there’s one spot of clean common ground in American politics, and that is the need for us to be leading on energy, clean energy, and for us as a country to be more secure with all those jobs,” Jones said Tuesday.

Jones, who has been consulting for companies and nonprofits on environmental issues, will start teaching at Princeton University in June and is rejoining the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, next month. On Friday, he will receive the NAACP’s President’s Award, for achievement in public service, the organization announced Tuesday.

Not surprising, another liberal ivy league school is also patting Van Jones on the back where he will teach and commute from DC to southern New Jersey.

We are all well aware that the Obama administration is beholden to the unions like SEIU and the UAW who gave millions to then Senator Obama during his campaign for the White House. However, what many may not know, or have forgotten is the fact that Barack Obama signed three executive orders that would make it easier to favor unions and unionized companies.

The first executive order requires employers with federal contracts above $100,000 in value to post a notice in the workplace informing their employees of their rights under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), including the right to join a union. This order also repeals Executive Order 13201, issued by President Bush in 2001, that required federal contractors and subcontractors to post so-called “Beck notices.” Such notices, named after the Supreme Court’s decision in Communication Workers v. Beck, 487 U.S. 735 (1988) informed employees covered under the NLRA that they could not be required to join a union or maintain union membership in order to retain their jobs and that employees who are subject to a union security clause and choose not to be union members may object to the purposes for which mandatory union dues are used.

The second order applies to federal contractors who provide services to government buildings. While there are several exemptions, under this new executive order, when a federal agency changes contractors, the new contractor will be required to offer jobs to the non-supervisory employees of its predecessor. This order is designed to try to ensure that when a unionized contractor is replaced, its successor will be obliged under existing labor laws to bargain with the original contractor’s labor union.

The third order prevents federal contractors from being reimbursed in federal funds for money spent to oppose (or support) union organizing efforts among their employees, which could violate first amendment rights if ever challenged in a court of law due to government interference and a company’s freedom of speech.

That’s why the latest news coming from the Obama administration is very disconcerting since they are planning on supporting proposals that will favor unions and unionized companies bidding on federal contracts, which will only increase the size of the government, the amount of bureaucracy, and the cost of contracts. However, it’s not anything we don’t already know since Obama’s philosophy seems more like “Go big, or go… you know something? just go big because you won’t have a home by the time our administration is through.”

The proposals, collectively known as “High Road Contracting Policy,” were first reported earlier this month. The basic elements of the policy would give preference to companies bidding on federal contracts that pay their hourly workers a “living wage” and provide health insurance, employer-funded pension plans and paid sick days.

Following the report Republicans slammed the proposal, with Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma referring to it as “backdoor card check.” Other critics, led by Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, worry the new rules would increase the cost of government contracting by as much as 20 percent, or more than $100 billion annually, while further slowing the procurement process.

Proponents of the proposals, including the Center for American Progress and the Economic Policy Institute, argue government contracting should be used as a vehicle for expanding the middle class and many of the workers that would be impacted by the changes end up costing the government more through public assistance programs such as Medicaid and food stamps. David Madland of CAP also pointed to studies on the state and local level that show no cost increase following the implementation of similar policies.

However, the White House did admit that contracting costs would increase if this proposal went through. Pardon me if I’m a little skeptical and a little tired of unions being used as the end-all-be-all of the middle class. Most of the middle class are professional workers or even blue collared workers who don’t belong to unions. Take for example my father – he’s a mechanic but doesn’t belong to the UAW, much like many of his co-workers. Does he make a ton of money? No, he’s just simply middle class and thus it is completely disingenuous for anybody to equate unions with the middle class at all times. It seems as if the current crop of bureaucrats would love nothing more than for the true middle class to be unionized and therefore controlled and dependent upon the federal government.

And lest we forget some of the eye-opening clips of Obama speaking with organizations like SEIU:

{My favorite part is Obama telling SEIU that they should want a leader who can tell the truth… Interesting that he’s now been caught in many lies, most recently ACORN}

The White House and Democratic Leadership in the Senate has told Senator Nelson they will close every military base in Nebraska — a threat that is not credible, really — but they have also offered Senator Nelson between $300 million to $500 million in earmarks, according to key hill health care operatives. These hundreds of millions will be available for whatever he wants to spend them on in Nebraska.

Earlier, as mentioned above, there was a report that the White House and other Democrats were threatening to close Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska.

A Nelson aide has not only discredited the AFB threat, but has also stated the earmark bribery is an erroneous report.

As the Senate health care debate enters crunch time, the pressure from all sides continued to grow today, with Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., right in the middle.

His spokesman quickly dismissed a report by conservative columnist Michelle Malkin that Nelson was even being threatened with “closure of an air force base,” presumably Offutt Air Force Base, which is south of Omaha and home of U.S. Strategic Command. Malkin also said Nelson has been promised a “bribe bigger than Sen. Landrieu’s.”

That’s a reference to Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, a Democrat and one of the last holdouts on the vote to begin the health care debate. The legislation includes a provision to increase Louisiana’s Medicaid funds that Landrieu says is worth $300 million.

I wonder who we should believe? Another politician or people legitimately concerned about the future of the country? Excuse me if I’m not ready to concede that the bribery is false, given the fact that so many politicians seem to have lost all sense of decency, integrity and any connection to the people they supposedly represent.

Investigations are still ongoing for recently fired IG, Gerald Walpin. He was fired earlier this year after aggressively investigating the suspected fraud and misuse of funds by an Obama ally, Kevin Johnson and AmeriCorps.

More information continues to trickle out regarding this case; eventually slow drips can cause a flood. Darrell Issa & Charles Grassley, 2 senior ranking republicans, have been digging into this matter; to find out whether the firing was valid or if was used to cover-up fraud of a political ally, which seems to be the more likely case.

The new information coming to the surface involves the head of AmeriCorps and Michelle Obama’s top aide/chief of staff.

According to Republican investigators, Alan Solomont, then the chairman of the Corporation for National and Community Service, which oversees AmeriCorps, had denied meeting with Jackie Norris, at the time the First Lady’s chief of staff. But recently-released White House visitor logs show that Solomont met with Norris on June 9 of this year (as well as on two earlier occasions). President Obama fired Walpin on June 10 after an intense dispute over Walpin’s aggressive investigation of misuse of AmeriCorps money by Obama political ally Kevin Johnson, the mayor of Sacramento, California.

After being presented with the visitor logs, investigators say, Solomont explained that he met with Norris to discuss Corporation business but did not discuss the Walpin matter. When pressed, Solomont said he might have made an offhand comment or a mention in passing, about the Walpin affair, but that he and Norris did not have a discussion about it.

Solomont’s explanations have left both Rep. Darrell Issa, ranking Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and Sen. Charles Grassley, top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, frustrated and vowing to continue their investigation of the Walpin matter. In a letter to Solomont, sent Friday, Issa wrote that he has “serious questions about the veracity of your…testimony.” In a statement Saturday, Grassley said he is “concerned about the accuracy and completeness of Mr. Solomont’s answers to questions.”

The Met Office has embarked on an urgent exercise to bolster the reputation of climate-change science after the furore over stolen e-mails.

More than 1,700 scientists have agreed to sign a statement defending the “professional integrity” of global warming research. They were responding to a round-robin request from the Met Office, which has spent four days collecting signatures. The initiative is a sign of how worried it is that e-mails stolen from the University of East Anglia are fuelling scepticism about man-made global warming at a critical moment in talks on carbon emissions.

One scientist said that he felt under pressure to sign the circular or risk losing work. The Met Office admitted that many of the signatories did not work on climate change.

Funny, I think I might feel uncomfortable signing an oath to not speak ill of data I’m trying to research and prove as fact. This is not a settled science as much as anybody would like to claim it is. Theories exist and until they are proven as fact, they merely remain as theories – which is why science seems to take forever. The idea that man can play such a huge role in something as large as our globe and the climate is sheer arrogance and egoism. Climate change is a naturally occurring event that has ebbed and flowed for decades if not eons. The more emails, the more proof, the more information that comes out on this hoax, the better for everybody. That’s not to say that people who disagree do not believe in taking care of their environment, it just means that the skeptics have serious doubts as to the legitimacy of any type of man-made climate change. I’d like to know how liberals can rail against big oil but seem to have no problem when their own side of the aisle is in the tank for Green Corporations and have much to gain from cap and tax – how is that any different?

Signing a pledge such as the one above seems to worsen the credibility and cause conflict of interest among people who became scientists to prove and disprove based on factual evidence. What if, at some point, global warming is proven to be a hoax? Scientists should not be held down by some oath that forces them to hide significant information from the public. There are other times in history when people had to pledge their allegiance to a cause, and that usually didn’t end very well…

The problem with the petition as a form is also a problem with the Met Office petition’s substance. The purpose of the petition is to shore up scientists’ authority by vouching for their integrity. But signing a loyalty oath under pressure from the government is itself a corrupt act. Anyone who signs this petition thereby raises doubts about his own integrity. And once again, the question arises: Why should any layman regard global warmism as credible when the “consensus” rests on political machinations, statistical tricks and efforts to suppress alternative hypotheses?

IMHO, any scientist who signs this petition has lost all credibility to be fair, reasonable, balanced, and able to report fact – not some fiction in which they signed onto.

Hillary Clinton’s pollster, Mark Penn, received funds for two of his firms from the recent stimulus bill. The same bill that was supposed to put jobless Americans back to work. The evidence that this bill was merely a pay off to all of DC’s cronies continues to pile up.

Najibullah Zazi, the man captured and being questioned for the terrorist raid in New York was found to have $50K in unsecured loans in the form of unsecured credit cards from the banks that were bailed out by the government. So far the only mentions of this come from the Jawa Report, Market Ticker, and the NY Daily news. This is a HUGE story – where is the media and the outrage of the American public? Oh that’s right, the media is still too busy talking about the continuing aftermath of Jackson’s death and now Teddy Kennedy’s. Journalism is dead!

HOW IN THE HELL DO OUR BANKING REGULATORS ALLOW THIS SORT OF OUTRIGHT FRAUDULENT GRANTING OF CREDIT? $50,000 IN UNSECURED CREDIT LINES TO A FREAKING DELIVERY DRIVER WHO APPEARS TO BE A FOREIGN NATIONAL WITH NO ASSETS IN THE UNITED STATES AGAINST WHICH TO SECURE THE LOAN?

THE BANKS THAT WE BAILED OUT FAILED TO STOP THIS CRAP ALL THE WAY UP TO MARCH OF THIS YEAR AT LEAST (WHEN THIS GUY FILED BANKRUPTCY) AND PROBABLY STILL ARE DOING IT!

This is an OUTRAGE. Not only did this guy effectively stick the US Taxpayer with the $50,000 in debt it appears he may have been using the freaking money to plot some sort of terrorist attack as part of an Al-Qaida cell INSIDE THE UNITED STATES?

TO PUT THIS IN ONE SENTENCE: BANKS THAT WE BAILED OUT WITH TAXPAYER MONEY ARE FUNDING TERRORISTS INSIDE THE US?!

I’m sure more government regulation will really help thwart all of the corruption and criminal activity – especially when it comes to our own country funding terrorist plots on our own soil.